Willy De Backer BE

Genau! That's why I always was a fan of Petra Kelly 😊

Munich 1938-2026: what lies under the rubble of geopolitical destruction? Munich has a history of hosting conversations that mistake symptoms for causes. In September 1938, European leaders gathered in the city to address what they understood as a political crisis: Hitler’s...

Read my analysis of the #Munich Security Conference - "The most consequential dimension of global security, the collision between a growth-dependent civilisation & the physical limits of the planet it inhibits, remains a political taboo"
www.linkedin.com/pulse/munich...
@camlinger.bsky.social

When progressives worship at the altar of growth Today in Antwerp, industry bosses hand their wish list to Macron, Merz, and De Wever. Tomorrow in Alden Biesen, EU leaders will hear speeches outlining these priorities.

I wrote about EU leaders meeting the high priests of growth in Antwerp and Alden Biesen this week -
www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-p...
#EUCompetitiveness #PostGrowth #PlanetaryBoundaries #GreenDeal #SingleMarket

The hunger for limits that populist authoritarians exploit A new study in Comparative Political Studies arrives at a conclusion that will surprise few readers of my Linkedin posts: populist orientation - which refers to a preference for anti-elite, people-cen...

"To understand why populists are winning, we need to recognise the new political divide - not left-right but bounded-unbounded."
My thoughts on the success of populists, the crisis of modernity & the need for limits
#Populism #Authoritarianism #Limits
www.linkedin.com/pulse/hunger...

Global trade deals in times of ecological overshoot When Ursula von der Leyen called the EU-India Free Trade Agreement "the mother of all deals," she was speaking the language of limitless growth: €200 billion in projected trade by 2030, tariffs slashe...

My LinkedIn post on the EU-India and Mercosur trade deals: we need " a radical rethinking of what trade is for and how much the planet can sustain."
#EUIndia #EUMercosur #TradePolicy
www.linkedin.com/pulse/global...

Global trade deals in times of ecological overshoot When Ursula von der Leyen called the EU-India Free Trade Agreement "the mother of all deals," she was speaking the language of limitless growth: €200 billion in projected trade by 2030, tariffs slashe...

My view on the EU-India and Mercosur trade deals: "Until trade policy can ask "how much?" rather than only "how green?", it will continue producing agreements that accelerate the very problem they claim to address."
#EUIndia #EUMercosur #TradePolicy #PostGrowth

www.linkedin.com/pulse/global...

Adolescence without adulthood: AI and the silence of the cosmos In Carl Sagan's Contact, an astronomer who detects the first signal from an alien civilisation is asked what question she would pose to them. Her answer: "How did you do it? How did you survive this t...

Dario Amodei, CEO of #Anthropic, wrote a fascinating essay on #AI adulthood - my cosmic challenge to his optimistic views
"The universe is silent because no species escapes the trap that symbolic intelligence sets for itself."
www.linkedin.com/pulse/adoles...
#AIDisruption #FermiParadox

Waarom zowel Silicon Valley-trumpisten als postmoderne filosofen dwepen met Ernst Jünger De schrijver Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) verheerlijkte oorlogsgeweld, tripte op lsd en was een profeet van de totalitaire technologie. Toch voelen niet alleen Silicon Valley-trumpisten, maar ook postmode...

Excellent article in Dutch magazine @groene.nl on the complexity of visionary German author and philosopher Ernst Jünger by @jorismelman.bsky.social
www.groene.nl/artikel/het-...

When history rhymes: America’s Weimar playbook In the past week, the US seized Maduro in Venezuela. Trump threatens military action against Greenland.

New ICE killing in #Minneapolis today - read what I wrote about the Weimar Playbook on 10 January www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-h...

Carney's Davos speech: changing the sign while others smash the window Mark Carney's Davos speech is getting traction, and understandably so. For anyone rattled by Trump's Greenland threats, tariff bullying, and the general sense that the rules no longer protect the rule...

Why #Carney's #Davos speech is not what some progressive commentators believe it is.
"Genuine living in truth about our civilisational moment would mean acknowledging that strategic autonomy on a destabilising planet is meaningless"
www.linkedin.com/pulse/carney...
#Geopolitics #ClimateChange

Magic Mountain redux: Davos 2026 and sympathy with death Thomas Mann set his novel Der Zauberberg in Davos. His sanatorium patients lived suspended from ordinary time, removed from the “flatlands” below, developing what he called a "sympathy with death": no...

Davos 1924: patients charting symptoms while tuberculosis advances. Davos 2026: elites ranking risks while the planet burns. On the resemblance between Mann's great novel and our dark reality.
#WEF26 #Davos #ClimateEmergency #PlanetaryBoundaries #Geopolitics
www.linkedin.com/pulse/magic-...

I agree, Soumaya.

David Bowie and my politics of limits 10 January 2026 "Turn and face the strange." Ten years ago today, David Bowie died.

Ten years of absence. A lifetime of resonance - my humble homage to David #Bowie
www.linkedin.com/pulse/david-...

This resonates with my LinkedIn post of today www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-h...

"The central challenge is not simply to police ‘harmful content’ after the fact, but to rebuild what might be called the factual commons."
Excellent essay by Lisa Klaassen on the communication revolution
#fakenews #authoritarianism #media

Prosperity as health: Why we need an economy of care for a liveable future | BMJ article by Tim Jackson Climate breakdown should be understood as a profound abdication of care, argues CUSP co-Director Tim Jackson in an opinion piece commissioned for the Britis ...

Climate breakdown is a profound abdication of care, argues @timjackson.org.uk in his new @bmj.com opinion piece. Addressing it takes more than tech fixes—it means reimagining the purpose of the economy.
➡️ cusp.ac.uk/themes/aetw/...
—
cc #TheCareEconomy #Postgrowth #Degrowth #WellbeingEconomy

Time to re-publish Klaus Theweleit's "Männerphantasien"?
www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/klaus-thewel...
#masculinity #authoritarianism
@onachtwey.bsky.social @derbernd.bsky.social

Venezuela or the four horsemen of civilisational collapse Four horsemen gallop through the Venezuela crisis: drugs, dollars, oil, and AI. Each tells a partial story.

Venezuela is not about #Venezuela. It is about a civilisation that cannot leave resources in the ground. Four forces converge there: drugs, dollars, oil, and AI. Follow them, and you see why we keep choosing catastrophe." My latest LinkedIn post www.linkedin.com/pulse/venezu...
#geopolitics

Indeed, Helen Thompson's interview on this broadcast is the first geopolitical expert to make the connection between the 4 horsemen of the new international disorder: drugs - oil - petrodollars and AI www.bbc.com/audio/play/m... (from min. 50:02)
@annpettifor.bsky.social @ecodenker.bsky.social

"Genadeklap voor de wereldorde": hoe de aanval van de VS op Venezuela goed nieuws is voor Vladimir Poetin | VRT NWS: nieuws De VS lapt het internationaal recht aan zijn laars en trekt zich niets meer aan van de wereldorde zoals die na WO II is opgebouwd. Dat zegt expert internationale politiek Laurien Crump na de aanval op...

Als Trump Venezuela kan binnenvallen, dan legitimeert dat Poetins oorlog in Oekraïne. Lang dachten we nog dat Trump naïef was en daarom toegevingen deed aan Poetin, maar nu zien we dat de 2 ook echt op 1 lijn zitten.
vrtnws.be/p.8eaX4pQo4

Venezuela Crisis and Eurasian Reverberations The extrajudicial capture of Maduro by US special operations forces represents a shift in the global security architecture and Eurasian dynamics.

And now?
"Moscow would view Maduro’s capture as a breach of the last remaining limits on the security of political leaders. This substantially heightens the likelihood of Russian decapitation strikes targeting the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv."
www.specialeurasia.com/2026/01/03/v...
@vrtnws.be

Nieuwe grote kerncentrales kunnen ten vroegste eind 2039 klaar zijn In het meest optimistische scenario zal de bouw van nieuwe grote kerncentrales in België ten vroegste tegen eind 2039 klaar zijn. Dat blijkt uit een nieuwe studie.

Nieuwe grote kerncentrales kunnen ten vroegste eind 2039 klaar zijn www.tijd.be/ondernemen/m... - en hoeveel gaan ze ons kosten? @tijd.be - we hebben blijkbaar tijd en geld genoeg!

My reading list for 2026 | Willy De Backer Some years are hinges. 1929. 1933. 1989. Years when the door swings and the world on the other side is unrecognisable. Will 2026 carry that weight? Here are my five must-read books for weathering the...

Some years are hinges. 1929. 1933. 1989. Years when the door swings and the world on the other side is unrecognisable. Will 2026 carry that weight?

Here are my five must-read books for weathering the storms ahead.
www.linkedin.com/posts/willy-...
@peterbrannen.bsky.social @amitav.bsky.social

My favorite non-fiction books of 2025 | Willy De Backer Here are the 5 books which illuminated the chaos of 2025 for me. The presentation is linked to my recent '2025 lessons' post https://lnkd.in/e-KSW6Aw

Here are the five books that illuminated the chaos of 2025 for me www.linkedin.com/posts/willy-...

Excellent interview with @quinnslobodian.com which diagnoses the right's mutations with precision, but unfortunately he does not examine whether the left's own foundational commitments need similar scrutiny.

How Colonial Ideas Shape Mental Health in Times of Systemic Destabilization We are living through what is often described as many crises at once, including climate breakdown, social inequality, political instability, and rising mental health distress. This article argues that...

Great paper by Vanessa Andreotti et al. on the need for neuro-decolonisation showing 'how colonial logics are reproduced not only through institutions and policies, but also through everyday ways of thinking, feeling, & relating that are often taken for granted."
www.growkudos.com/publications...

I got New York Review of Books’d by Bill McKibben www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

The “Crisis of Masculinity” Crisis - Journal #159 Maxi Wallenhorst argues that instead of trying to “fix” a sexual order in crisis, we should try to change.

German writer Maxi Wallenhorst @weakanalogy.bsky.social has a fascinating essay on the 'crisis of masculinity' delivering a harsh critique of Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies '1977), one of my favourite studies on the genealogy of German Nazism
www.e-flux.com/journal/159/...
#masculinity #gender

2026: Time to confront the enemy we hide "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote these words ...

Looking forward to 2026, I wrote about the war we refuse to see and the enemy we hide
#WarAndPeace #HumanExceptionalism #BoundedPolitics #Scapegoat
@anthonyburke.bsky.social @flusterbird.bsky.social
www.linkedin.com/pulse/2026-t...

Not stern enough: why green growth's best advocate still evades the hard questions "The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones." John Maynard Keynes wrote that nearly a century ago.

I reviewed the new book by Nicholas Stern "The Growth Story of the 21st Century"
#ClimateEconomics #PostGrowth #Omgroei #ThermodynamicLimits
www.linkedin.com/pulse/stern-...